World Blitz Championship 2007
GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov won the preliminary tournament of the World Blitz Championship with 15 points of 22. Other six qualifiers are GMs E.Bacrot, M.Adams, B.Savchenko 14.5, R.Ponomariov, A.Dreev and S.Rublevsky 14. In the finale (November 21-22) they will join eight participants of the finished M.Tal Memorial (V.Ivanchuk, V.Kramnik, P.Leko, Sh. Mamedyarov, A.Shirov, B.Gelfand, G.Kamsky and M.Carlsen) and five invited players: V.Anand, A.Karpov, P.Svidler, A.Morozevich and A.Grischuk. See games online since 11:00 Moscow time (http://russiachess.org/online/).

Bad Wiessee Open 2007
11th edition of the traditional open tournament takes place in Germany on November 10th to 18th. 416 participants are playing, the top seed being GM Alexander Shabalov USA 2626. You can watch several live games at http://www.it-zuverlaessig.de/oibm/index.html since 16:00 local time.

Ali Nihat Yazici: we demand apologies!
The President of the Turkish Chess federation Mr. Yazici wrote a letter to FIDE officials demanding apology from Mr. Vladimir Bykov for his article 'Ayse Kesim: a new world-class chess star?' published recently at our website. Read the letter by Mr. Yazici and an open letter by the Chief Editor of the site.

V.Faibisovich. There are still placesโฆ
IM V.Faibisovich takes us on tours of St. Petersburg's districts mentioning places where chess competitions were staged and where the leading chessplayers of the city lived. Seventh tour deals with Kirovsky, Moskovsky, Frunzensky and partly with Krasnoselsky and Nevsky districts. Added to the โHistoryโ section.

USSR โ Yugoslavia: Day 2
Round 2 was drawn: 5-5. Only V.Vorotnikov and Z.Spasojevic could beat their opponents. So, the general score of the historical match is 11-9 in favour of the USSR team. A closing ceremony will take place tomorrow before the start of the Mikhail Tal Memorial.